1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an improved data processing system and, in particular, to a method and apparatus for data storage protection using cryptography.
2. Description of Related Art
In virtually every networking system, an administrative system secures resources by restricting access to those resources. A network within an enterprise may have many types of resources to be accessed: physical resources, such as client machines; and logical resources, such as computer programs. Different resources may have various authentication schemes. When an entity wants to access a restricted resource, the entity is required to authenticate itself to a requested service or an authentication service that acts on behalf of the requested service. The management of information about authorized entities to support these authentication schemes entails significant costs and administrative labor.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have a mechanism for managing trust relationships among entities in a data processing system that is founded on trust provided by a hardware entity within the data processing system.